Detours
by The Bog Witch
Summary: After an unfortunate accident involving the Voot Cruiser, Zim’s temper, and Dib’s elbow, Zim and Dib crash land on an alien planet. Features intergalactic revolutionaries/ZADR/space travel/alien cultures/mortal peril/a broken cup holder.
1. A Little Fire

WARNING: Future **ZADR**. For those who don't know, this means freaky-deaky interspecies same-sex relations the likes of which have been known to cause nuclear implosions and lion-on-lion violence and indigestion and daytime television and all sorts of horrible things too wretched to mention here. Enter at your own risk. It's too late for me. Save yourselves.

A/N: So this is my first "serious" slash fic. I've outlined about twenty two chapters. I don't know how explicit it will get, but I've rated it T to be on the safe side. (There will be a bit of violence and some light swearing.)

Ooh, and for those of you who prefer pictures to words, **THERE IS A COMIC VERSION OF THIS STORY!** I put this in bold because I'm desperate to pimp my fancomic. _Desperate_, I say! The comic version can be found here: .com/art/Detours-1-0-89103110 (If this link fails, it's on deviantart, under The Bog Witch.)

Special thanks to Taylor the Weird, who very kindly beta-read this for me. Any mistakes/awkward sentences/projectile vomiting you may experience due to reading this are my fault and not hers though, because I've been fiddling with it for the past few months.

Disclaimer: Invader Zim belongs to Jhonen Vasquez et al. This is a nonprofit endeavor, perpetrated only because I am totally insane and bananas are delicious.

* * *

**Detours**

**1. A little fire burns up a great deal of corn.**  
—_Hebrew Proverb_

The beam of his flashlight cut through the darkness. Dib crept into the front yard, tip-toeing past the gnomes. _Please, please don't notice_, he thought at them. He had a chance. The gnomes were erratic; Gir disabled them half the time anyway.

Sneaking across the grass, he submerged himself in the long shadows cast by the building that loomed to the left of the house. Each step held the power to betray him, so he kept his tread quick and light, like a water strider skimming across a pond.

Suddenly, an electric buzz sliced through the air. Whirring into motion, one gnome turned, its chunky base creaking. He whipped his head around and fumbled his flashlight. A circle of light bounced off one of the gnome's plastic eyes, creating a gleam.

Dib froze, one foot raised off the ground. He held his breath.

Wait for it. Wait for it.

After all this, he hoped it would still be there.

At last the gnome halted, fell back into silence. Dib traversed the yard and snuck around the side of the house and climbed over the huge cables that no one but him ever really seemed to notice.

Pressing up against the back of the house, he willed himself to blend in with the shadows. He inched along, squinting into the darkness. Training the flashlight at the ground, he watched for inconvenient rocks. Finally, he stopped, stood, and tucked the flashlight into his coat pocket. The sheen of the metal in the moonlight was enough.

He found it! Zim's Voot Cruiser. Dib exhaled slowly, releasing a breath he hadn't known he was holding.

Stalking toward the ship, he tugged at the collar of his trench coat. It had turned unexpectedly warm since he came out and now he wished he'd left the coat at home.

Close enough to touch, the Voot Cruiser awaited him. In the dark, it looked different than it had this afternoon, when he caught a glimpse of it through Zim's window. Thanks to Gir, who left the door open again, Dib had almost managed to duck through the back door and reach it before Zim came to chase him out. Then, the ship glimmered in the sunlight, large and haughty in its brazen visibility. Now, obscured in the gloom, it seemed to recede into the background, the metal of its hull melding with the bushes.

Despite its newfound meekness, Dib could see that it wasn't a perfect match for Tak's ship. Patiently awaiting repairs in his garage, Tak's ship possessed more strange outcroppings and a hodgepodge of a hull, probably because planet Dirt didn't have much in the way of spaceship construction materials. Still, he thought the two vessels would be close enough for his purposes.

For the past few weeks, Dib had been trying to fix Tak's ship, but he still hadn't gotten it quite right. For one thing, the cup holder was broken. Plus, there was the little issue of the ship being unable to attain enough velocity to leave the earth's atmosphere. That really put a damper on his space travel plans.

If only he could get a closer look at Zim's ship, he might just be able to patch up Tak's. Then he could finally leave this spinning dirt ball behind.

For surveillance purposes, of course. _Of course_. He only wanted to prevent Zim from trying anything funny, understand. He would never ever think of leaving for good. Certainly not. Aside from the obvious alien menace, there were zombies and Bigfoot and, and, and—_vampire piggies_ out there! The world _needed_ him, even if sometimes it seemed as though it thought it didn't. No, as Earth's self appointed protector, he could never truly abandon the planet. Never.

(It may have been a worthless spinning dirt ball, but it was _his_ worthless spinning dirt ball.)

Reaching up, he stroked the smooth metallic surface. It was cool to the touch, a pleasant relief from the muggy night air. Now to get inside….

Something clacked and snapped nearby. Dib stiffened. His eyes darted from the ship, to the trees, to the lurid green of Zim's house.

Nothing.

He waited with his head cocked, listening.

The noise again. Closer.

He took his hand off the ship. It was probably just a squirrel or something. Squirrels seemed strangely attracted to Zim's house. Gir was probably feeding them. Either that or Zim was plotting something! Maybe he'd implanted tiny mind-control devices into their rodent brains so that he could rule the world as some kind of mind-controlling squirrel... lord…thing….

Whatever. He couldn't worry about that now. He had to be strong, had to stay focused on his mission.

(The whole world was counting on him, even if they didn't know it yet.)

There had to be some way to get inside. Kneeling, he passed his hands over the ship's underbelly. If it worked anything like Tak's, there would be a button somewhere on the outside to open it.

Hopefully it wasn't locked.

Once again, that noise skittered on the edge of his hearing. It crackled, rustled, _crunched _towards him. It sounded a lot bigger than a squirrel. _Ignore it_, he commanded, but his heart hammered in his chest regardless. With barely suppressed urgency, he ran his palm along the side of the ship until he felt the button. Glancing over his shoulder, he pressed it.

The cruiser's clear dome slid back, revealing plush magenta seats. Dib's arm shot out to touch the control panel.

Bam! A sharp bolt of pain, hard and hot like lightning, hit the back of his skull; for a second he winced as his vision darkened. He recovered quickly, used to this kind of treatment from his classmates and his family and random strangers at the bus stop…. He forgave them, though. They didn't understand, that was all.

(Tak's ship was not an escape hatch. He was repairing it for the good of the human race.)

Rubbing the back of his head, he turned around to look for his assailant.

Still nothing.

The shadows flickered in the yard.

Somewhere far away, an owl hooted.

A flash of light on the ground caught his eye. Squinting, he groped in the grass until his hands closed upon the source: a slim wrench. He looked down at it for a second, uncomprehending. What would hit him with a wrench? Robotic squirrels? Or maybe some kind of—

"Hello, _Dib_," a voice spat, packing eight years of unchecked hatred into a single syllable. Zim stood behind him, much too close for comfort. Dib could feel the chemical closeness of him, the heat radiating off their skin creating an invisible pull between them.

"Zim!" Dib's eyes narrowed. He should've known it was too good to be true. He balled his fists, preparing for yet another heroic struggle for the fate of the earth.

(Because, eventually, they would all realize how much they needed him. They _would. _They had to.)

"How did you infiltrate my glorious base? How? Tell Zim!" The alien jumped spastically.

"You hit me with a wrench!" Dib said, ignoring his question because he knew Zim hated to be ignored.

"You should get down on your filthy knees and lick the boots of the MIGHTY Zim for the chance to be destroyed so painlessly!"

"Actually that kind of hurt. And it didn't destroy me."

"Silence! You speak lies!" he shrieked.

Zim launched himself at Dib, knocking him into the Voot Cruiser. Caught off balance, Dib slammed against the upholstery harder than he'd expected.

"I'm onto you, Zim!" Dib yelled, nonsensically. He had found that while locked in the heat of battle, it didn't really matter what they were saying, so long as the right sentiment was there. The true meaning seeped out from behind the actual words, and it was always the same: _ihateyouihateyouihateyou. _

They whacked at each other, evenly matched. While Zim was at least a head shorter than him, Dib was and had always been the epitome of pasty goth kid—not exactly heavyweight champion of the year material.

Zim pinned Dib to the seat; Dib kicked out, trying to dislodge him. A high whine sounded from above as clear plastic folded over the ship, pressing them together. Somehow they'd managed to close the dome. Great. That last thing he wanted to do was have an epic battle with his archenemy in an area roughly the same size as two airplane seats—two airplane seats _in coach_ at that.

"Zim! Wait!" Twisting, he felt for the button to open the dome. Where was it?

"Ha! Pitiful human! It is too late to beg for mercy!" Zim crowed and at that moment Dib was not thinking of the fate of the world but of biting and clawing and scratching and, most of all, winning—any way he could.

Dib delivered an undercut to Zim's jaw and the other bounced against the side of the ship with a crack. However, the space was so small that this hardly made a difference.

On the rebound, Zim kicked him hard in the stomach, landing him once more on his back. Dib's elbow struck the control panel. Jolts of pain raced up his funny bone. Grimacing, he forced himself to prepare for the next blow.

But it didn't come. Antennae twitching, Zim hovered frozen before him.

Then Dib heard it. Soft at first, then gradually growing in speed and volume, a thousand tiny clickings and grindings signaled that somewhere, complicated machinery tumbled into motion.

"Look what you've done now, stink-beast!" Zim hissed.

Dib looked out the dome just in time to watch the world behind them collapse into a pinprick of blue light.


	2. Two Captains

A/N: So it's been a ridiculously long time. Still, I am going to finish this story (and all my other stories...) for sure. Eventually. Right now, I've got a cache of two chapters so I'm going to have a regular updating schedule for now. We'll see how this works out.

Therefore, next week Saturday I'll put up chapter three. Stay tuned, kids!

Disclaimer: Invader Zim belongs to Jhonen Vasquez et al. This is a nonprofit endeavor, perpetrated only because I can never stop a story even if I take a million years to update.

* * *

**2. Two captains will sink the ship.**

—_Turkish proverb_

Gaz was pissed off. But this was a normal state of affairs when one lived with a particularly abnormal sibling.

It all started when she went to the refrigerator to get a soda.

She went to get a soda and when she looked on the shelf, the shelf was empty.

The_ shelf _was _empty_.

Dib would pay.

Knowing her brother's habits, she marched straight down to Zim's house. She figured that Dib would be there, 'saving mankind', which was Dib-speak either for what most of the world referred to as 'obsessive stalking' or for what Gaz's deepest darkest dreams referred to as 'getting his rocks off.'

Gaz did not dream often, but when she did, they were always nightmares.

This was fine by her. Gaz liked nightmares. They gave her interesting new ideas.

Gaz walked up to the door, past Zim's little mechanical gnomes. One sparked at her, grabbing onto her dress. She glared at it. It held on still, a little more tenuously, as if somewhere in the sorry pile of gears that constituted its mind, it realized its mistake. She gave it a small short kick at the base and it exploded.

She'd learned that move from the scene in _Terminal Science Fiction VII_ where you attacked the mechanical wildebeests. It was not surprising to Gaz how often her game experience came in handy in the so-called 'real world.'

Life was a game, after all. Gaz just happened to hold the cheat codes.

Leaving a smoldering crater behind her, Gaz walked up to the door. For once, it was locked.

"Just a minute!" burbled a little voice from inside. Gaz groaned internally. The last thing she wanted to deal with was Zim's insane robot. She couldn't even blow it up to relieve tension. It _liked_ being blown up.

She waited for it to open the door.

And waited

And waited.

And _waited_.

Fed up, Gaz kicked down the door.

"Hold on," the robot said, from the couch. "Be there in a minute." It was staring at a blank TV screen.

"I love this show," it said. "It has piggies!" Glaring, she stomped over to the robot. Her boots stuck to the carpet as she tracked through a puddle leaking out from an overturned Cherry Doom soda can.

"Do you know where my idiot brother went?" she asked, knowing the futility of her words even as she said them.

"Noooo…" it cocked its head to the side, straining to see the blank TV screen from around Gaz's body.

Right. She might as well have asked the couch itself for all the help the robot was. She marched out of the room, into the kitchen. The stupid little robot clanked behind her.

She opened up the refrigerator and stepped into the elevator, because well, the toilet entrance was just too weird. Someone who needed to maintain her sanity had to be cautious about these things.

The basement did not surprise her; she'd seen it before. And anyway, Zim's piss poor disguise couldn't fool anyone with an IQ higher than room temperature. To be fair, most of the planet was painfully stupid anyway. The thing was, just because Dib was right about Zim being an alien didn't mean Dib wasn't crazy. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while, as the saying goes.

Gaz was the sane one. Ever since her childhood, she had to be almost dangerously sane, so as to make up for Dib. That was why she needed video games, didn't just want them, but _needed_ them, like oxygen or pizza. A wholly sane person, without even those little delusions to get them through the day, could not survive.

The robot was not far behind her, squeaking and squealing in a way that could rival Dib in annoyance. It didn't stick around, thank goodness, instead wandered off screaming into the depths of the lab to press some buttons and generally wreak havoc.

Strange voices emanated from within the room, though Gaz couldn't detect their source. She walked past a machine with lurid purple tubes sticking out of its sides.

"Dib? Is that you?"

The voices grew a bit louder as she walked, but she couldn't understand what they were saying.

"Dib, if that's you, you're in for a world of—" She stopped short suddenly, her gaze flickering upwards.

A video screen. Two gigantic creatures that looked a bit like Zim, but stretched out, were arguing in a different language. Just great. The last thing this universe needed, Gaz was sure, was more Zims.

"Hey, it's an Irthenoid!" The red one said, suddenly, in English. They were sort of bug like, and, though it was hard to tell for sure from the screen, seemed much taller than Zim. She wondered if Zim was short for a whatever-he-was. What species was Zim, anyway? Dib had probably said something about it, but she tended to tune him out for the sake of her sanity.

The term 'buggers' came to mind, maybe because of the antenna, but that seemed a bit too much like copyright infringement.

"Hello...little…Irth…creature! Can… you…understand…me?" the purple one spoke slowly, drawing out every word as if speaking to someone who was a little dim.

Gaz glared.

"Do…not…be…afraid! We…are…from…a…highly…advanced…civilization… far…superior…to…your…own," the red one waved his arms as if to indicate the vast superiority of it.

"Ooh, spoooooooky!" The purple one made spirit fingers.

Oh, this was just too much. She wished it were possible to deliver some kind of kick through a video screen. As it was, she resolved to ignore them. They were NPCs, non-player characters—there to fill out the background, but otherwise not worth paying much attention to.

Sometimes, the world seemed full of NPCs.

"Do you think it understands us?" The purple one turned to the red.

Peering behind a huge glowing block, she looked behind a row of test tubes. Maybe 'buggers' was from that video game based on the movie based on the book by Blorson Scotch Lard. The one where you're Ember, an infant girl recruited by the government to destroy alien invaders. The graphics on that one sucked, Gaz remembered.

"Don't know. This translator eel seems to be working." The red one pulled a long wriggling wire out from his pak. It sparked a bit at then end, then sputtered.

"These Irthikins are _tiny_. Almost as small as Zim," the purple one said.

"Poor pathetic Irthewhatsists," the red one shook his head.

"Hey where is Zim, anyway?" The purple one leaned forward.

"Damned if I know," muttered Gaz, but they weren't paying any attention to her. She wandered around the labs, looking in every nook and cranny for Dib. She was pretty sure Zim wasn't here. You always heard Zim before you saw him. Dib was the same way, now that she thought about it. When you got the two of them together, it created a level of irritation that few would be able to ignore.

Maybe they were on the moon base? She'd have to see if she could find a ship. Frowning, she walked back into the main lab. In the corner Zim's stupid little robot sat chewing on some electrical wires and giggling every time it got shocked.

"You know what we should do with this planet?" the big red Zim was saying. "A twenty four hour convenience store! You know, with cheap snacks and clothes and Veelopian laser guns and stuff."

"Like a giant Squall-Mart," she said, looking up from her search. Gaz shuddered. Once, she braved the Squall-Mart on Super-Sale Saturday, when they sold video games for extra bargain prices. The whole place was covered in sticky goo and she spent twenty minutes crushed between the belly of a morbidly obese car repairman and the formidable hip of a middle aged woman on a cell phone. She managed to snag the last copy of _First Degree Homicide 3_ for only $9.99, but it almost wasn't worth it to put up with the human detritus that ambled along the aisles.

"Ooh, Squall-Mart, that sounds good," said the purple Zim, barely registering her presence.

"How about Squallmartopia? I thought of it first!" said the red Zim.

"Hey yeah…" said the purple Zim. "Do you think Irthinites would make good retail drones or should we just raze 'em all in the organic sweep?"

"So you're about to enslave the Earth?" Frowning, Gaz looked up from her search. She wasn't the biggest fan of Earth, but it was where she kept all her stuff and its destruction might severely cut into her gaming time.

"Ah-huh."

"Don't tell it that, Pur," the red Zim chided.

"Whatever. Irthiwhatsit, what happened to Zim? Did the broken flux capacitor we put in the ship kill him yet?"

Gaz looked to the left, then to the right, then shrugged. These two were obviously idiots – the goofy comic relief filler characters who didn't have any serious impact on the game. She knew the type. Their kind of NPC never actually destroyed the world. It was all a matter of sitting through their speeches and maybe going on their little side quests.

"No?" asked the red Zim.

"He's not here," Gaz said. She waited, wishing she could scroll through their dialogue and get to the good part. Her fingers itched.

"Eh. He must be dead. Even if he fixed the flux capacitor, there's no way he could've survived the booby-trapped cup holder we sent him. The second he puts a drink in that thing – Kaboom! Little Zimmy pieces everywhere." They laughed uproariously, once again ignoring Gaz.

"Mastah went off in the space ship with the big headed boy," the robot put in.

"With a drink?" the red Zim asked hopefully.

"Nooooo…" said the robot. It pawed at a naked wire with its foot causing small sparks to jet out onto the floor.

"Why didn't you say that before?" Gaz rounded on it, clenching her fists.

"I wuz eatin' a muffin!" it screeched. "They wuz going real fast like whoooosh…"

"I'm going to kill the both of them," Gaz fumed. Dib would die for running out after drinking the last soda and Zim would die for helping him, and also for having such an annoying robot.

"You? Kill Zim? Be our guest," said the red Zim, laughing.

"Yeah, good luck with that," said the purple Zim.

"Tell you what," said the red Zim, wiping his eyes. "If you kill Zim, we'll give you uh…what is it that tiny Irthimabobs like?"

"Not turning my planet into the ninth circle of hell that is Squall-Mart?" Gaz rolled her eyes. NPCs. You could always count on them to hand out the items you needed. It was just a matter of suffering through their babble.

"Aw, but Squallmartopia must be a reality!" whined the purple Zim.

"Well…if Zim's still alive, you know he's going to find some way to mess it up," the red one said.

"True…hold on a minute."

They conferred, turning to one another, whispering loudly. Gaz took a quick sweep of the lab. She wondered if Zim had any video games, or if that weird laser weasel farm in the corner was what passed for entertainment on his planet.

Finally, the red one nodded. "I think we can come to some kind of agreement…"

* * *

"Wow." All the stars blinked around him, some so near he felt he could touch them. Swimming around the ship, the cosmos waved. Earth faded into the distance, washed away in a sea of blackness.

"Yes, yes—Zim's ship is amazing. Now move over!" Zim reached for the control panel. Dib remained where he was.

"It's pretty cramped in here," he said, almost conversationally. To his left whorled a glittering nebula, puffs of dust and hydrogen and helium undulating around its nexus like waves. Dib was so distracted that he hardly noticed the first almost civil words he'd spoken to his enemy in years.

"That's because it is only meant for one. And your head is freakishly huge." Zim leaned across Dib's lap, reaching for a button on the other side of the ship. Dib blocked his hand.

"Wait," He pressed his nose against the glass, trying to drink in the sharp pinks and oranges for as long as he could. "I want to look for a while."

"No! Looking time is over!" Zim's claws raked across his face, leaving trails of blood.

"Hey! Stop it!" Dib broke out of his spell at the sudden hot sensation.

"Do you even realize what you've done, dirtchild?" Stomping his foot against the bottom of the ship, Zim slapped him.

"What?" Dib kneed Zim in the gut, slamming him against the side of the ship. It was too cramped for fighting, really, but he couldn't help himself.

(He had to take any chance he could to rid the world of the alien menace. It was that simple.)

"While you were slithering into my base like some DISGUSTING slithering thing, I was repairing my ship. The controls have not been perfected yet!"

"So are you saying we're stuck out here?" he said, slamming Zim's head into the glass dome. A trickle of liquid leaked from the corner of Zim's eye. Blood? Tears? Dib had no idea.

"Oh of course not! Don't worry your giant head." With lightning speed, Zim elbowed Dib in the solar plexus, forcing him backward.

Dib smashed against the control panel, crushing several buttons beneath him. The ship jerked to the left, whizzing through a tunnel of stars at an incredible speed. A meteor struck somewhere on the underside of the hull. Zim cursed under his breath.

Barreling through a thin atmosphere, the ship sped relentlessly toward the unknown. Out of the corner of his eye, Dib could make out Zim pressed against the back of the seat, curled into a ball. Through the windshield of the cruiser, the last thing Dib saw before his vision doubled, then blacked out entirely was the ground rising up to meet him.


	3. You a Lady I a Lady

A/N: Okay, so it's technically Sunday right now, but here it is! Now the good stuff is really starting.

Disclaimer: Invader Zim belongs to Jhonen Vasquez et al. This is a nonprofit endeavor, perpetrated only because I am sure it's still Saturday somewhere in the world.

* * *

**3. You a lady, I a lady, who is to put the sows out of doors?**

_—Galician proverb_

Dib opened his eyes. His vision was blurred, the sky above him a pale ochre. He felt something hard digging into his back. It turned out to be the branch of a stunted bush. Dib winced and shifted. Groping in the dirt for his glasses, he found them off to the side, their frames bent slightly. Somehow, the glass was intact; he could feel the smooth wholeness of it beneath his fingers. Good. That was good. He put them on and rubbed his forehead.

Still blurry. He sat up and wiped the lenses on the underside of his shirt, which was still mostly clean. His coat was covered in dust. He stood up slowly to shake it off, testing his legs.

Standing wasn't easy, but it wasn't impossible either. He felt sore in places that he hadn't previously known existed. Added to that, his whole body felt heavy, as if the dust that coated his jacket was weighing him down. Stretching, he surveyed his surroundings.

The ship was several feet to the left, cracked open like a walnut, leaving a trail of strange warped parts fanned out behind it. Draped over the branches of a few stunted, scraggly trees, pieces of the busted hull glinted in the light. After he had been launched from the ship, he must've landed on this patch of dust and short shrubs, which probably broke the fall enough so that he wasn't killed. The scratches down his arms seemed to corroborate this.

But where was Zim?

He squinted into the horizon, noting the presence of three suns. One was barely more than a pinprick, whereas the other two were about the same size, hanging in opposite directions in the sky.

The land was flat, mostly, with a few hazy hills wavering in the distance. There didn't seem to be much more than the dirt and the low plants and the large blue rocks.

Suddenly, he realized that he was very lucky to be able to breathe. He just crash landed on an alien planet without so much as a space suit! Dib's fingers curled as he took several deep breaths. He could still breathe. It was alright.

Still there was that pervasive heavy feeling, that pressure weighing down his muscles. It wasn't unbearable, maybe only a step or two above the way he felt when getting out of a pool after a few hours of swimming, or more accurate to his life, getting out of the lake after a few hours snorkeling for a hidden race of deep sea monkeys, but it didn't exactly help.

Maybe Zim was still somewhere around the ship. He thought that, enemy or not, he might as well look for him. Dib had to keep an eye on him. The last thing he needed was to be ambushed in such an unfamiliar place.

Testing his feet, he padded over to the ship. Once, he stumbled over a patch of rough dead looking shrubs and a handful of wriggling sand colored worms the size of tire irons scattered. He jumped back only to land elbow deep in puddle of yellow-brown slime.

"Oh -!" grimacing, he stood and wiped his hands off on his jeans.

He moved on toward the ship. Even he could tell that it was in pretty bad shape. He poked at a fallen bolt. Were there even any tools on board in case of emergencies? He found himself wishing that he'd pocketed that wrench Zim threw at him.

Speaking of Zim, there was still no sign of the little green bugger.

He searched around the area, picking up parts of the ship as he went. He did not have much confidence in his ability to repair the thing by himself, but it would be his only way off this planet.

"Zim?" he called. His voice bounced off the rocks. Shivering a bit, he pulled his coat closer. He scanned the sky. The two large suns were sinking behind their respective hills. The third hovered in the center of the skyline, its feeble light providing barely enough illumination to make it visible.

As a chilly breeze swept across his face, Dib wondered how long night lasted on this planet.

"Zim?" he called again, a little louder this time. If night fell and he didn't find him….

No response.

Behind a few shrubberies, not far from the shell of the ship was a patch of dirt that seemed reasonably worm free. Dark clouds rolled over the expanse of sky. _God, I hope it doesn't rain acid here or anything_, Dib thought and inched closer to the ship. He was hesitant to sit inside it actually. Did broken space ships explode?

He didn't want to find out the hard way, that was for sure.

Just in case it did reach subzero temperatures, he crawled beneath the wreckage of the ship, arranging the two halves to form a kind of shelter. He was surprised to find that he was very tired, though in retrospect, it made sense. After all, he'd been up half the night sneaking into Zim's base already.

After the two suns had set, only the third remained, distant and wavery. It was getting colder, but Dib hardly noticed. He drifted off to sleep.

Later, he woke up feeling like, well, he'd just slept under the wreckage of a space ship on an alien planet. He stretched, stood up. It seemed to be early, judging by the height of the two suns, but he had no idea if one could go by that here. Where ever here was.

He was just about to go piss behind some bushes when he chanced to look down. Zim. The alien was lying unconscious partially buried beneath a mound of soft dirt. Dib knelt down and poked him. He stirred slightly but didn't wake up. That satisfied, Dib ran off to find another bush.

He was pleased that Zim wasn't dead, or at least, didn't seem to be dead. It wasn't like Dib would've missed him. Back home, he'd have left him for dead the first chance he got.

(And, _and._.. if Zim was going to die, Dib wanted, _needed _to have a hand in it somewhere. Yes, that was it.)

Anyway, as much as he hated to admit it, he needed him now if he was to repair the Voot Cruiser.

"Zim?" he nudged him with his foot. The Irken turned, stirred, opened his eyes blearily.

"GIR! What have I told you about startling the weasels?" One clawed fist shook, disturbing the dirt around him.

"Uh..." Dib squatted down to meet Zim's gaze. "It's just me, space-boy."

Hissing, Zim struck out at his face. Dib jerked backwards, sidestepping the blow.

"You!" Zim spat. Dib braced himself for another attack, but all at once Zim stopped, stilled. His antennae flicked back and forth as he frowned at the rocks, the scrubby bushes, the three suns. He looked from left to right and then back at Dib, suspicious.

"We crash landed on this planet, remember?" Dib said finally.

"I know that!" Zim snapped, straightening his spine.

Legs shaking, Zim staggered to his feet. Did he shake just because he'd been unconscious, or something more? Dib couldn't tell.

"This is all your fault," Zim growled. He swayed a little, then righted himself. "Definitely all your fault."

"How is this my fault? You pushed me!"

"That is irrelevant!" Zim tensed, dropping to fighting stance. "You were in _my _base, sneaking onto _my_ ship-"

"Look, this is getting us nowhere," Dib ran a hand through his hair. "We need to make some kind of plan. How about we-what are you doing?" Zim had his arms stretched out to his sides, but his head dipped to his collar.

"Nothing! I am doing nothing! It is you whose giant head won't stop rotating the ground...floor...thingy, " With that, Zim stumbled to the left, tipping like an overbalanced house of cards. He landed face down in the yellow dirt. His antennae twitched once, then stilled.

Dib nudged Zim's side with the toe of his boot. A low whirring noise came from his pak, and Dib hopped back, shielding his face. A moment passed and nothing happened. The sound dropped to a murmur then died out entirely. Dib waited for a few seconds longer. When he couldn't bear the silence any longer, he stepped forward again, carefully keeping to a fighting stance just in case.

"Hey? Is this some kind of alien mind trick or..." he didn't know how to finish that sentence. There was dozens of possibilities. This could all be some kind of "wounded yeti" ploy, like that one time in second grade when Tippy Murtz pretended to pass out on the playground. Just when Dib got close enough to examine her for ectoplasmic stomach gnats, Tippy kneed him in the groin. and ran off laughing to her friends. Dib eyed Zim's motionless pak. It could be a trap.

Or Zim could be genuinely injured. Then what?

"Hey?" Dib tried again. He shifted from foot to foot. "Zim?"

Cautiously, he knelt down. If Zim was really injured... Dib touched his arm. Like he'd been hit with a cattle prod, Zim sprang to life, tucking into a roll and leaping to his feet. Dib steeled himself for a fight.

"You! " Zim said. 'What have you done?"

"Alien planet? Crash landed? Is this sounding familiar?" Dib waved his arms. "We've already gone through this."

"I am aware of that!" Zim said. He wasn't swaying this time, but his legs were very stiff, like he was afraid to move them. Dib wondered if it was the increased gravity.

Zim let out a sigh that was either shaky or exasperated. "Earth-monkey. Go scout around and see if you can get our bearings."

"What, why me?"

"Because I am the leader of this operation!"

"Who decided that?" Dib snapped.

"Me, obviously. Just now. Weren't you paying attention? Now go!" Zim made a shooing motion.

"No! You don't get to be the leader just because you say so! That's not how leadership works! The most qualified, trustworthy person should be the leader and, as the one who _isn't_ an _evil alien monster_ bent on _destroying Earth_, that's clearly me. Why don't _you_ go check out the planet?" Dib folded his arms.

(So it had been a ploy after all. Zim was so obvious- Dib had seen through him from the beginning.)

"Silence! I -" Zim started, but Dib never got to hear what was coming next because just then the ground began to rumble. Clods of earth shot into the air; a stray rock kicked loose and slammed into Zim's back. Stumbling, he grabbed at the air, claws snagging Dib's trenchcoat.

"Now see what you've done!" Zim yelled. "If you had only OBEYED MY COMMANDS you would not have alerted _it_ to our presence!"

"You're the one who's always talking like you've got a megaphone glued to your mouth! If you'd have only done what _I _said-" but just then, _it_ burst through the ground and interrupted him.

_It_ was banana-yellow, twelve feet long, at least six feet high, and had the diameter of a monster truck tire. Giant pustules broke forth on its skin. Its three eyestalks quivered. It opened a mouth filled with needle sharp teeth dripping slime and roared.

"What is that thing?" Dib asked. His jaw dropped.

"Marauding slug beast," Zim gasped, and passed out.


End file.
